Hong Kong Milk Formula Hotline Flooded With Calls

People queue up to get their packages, some of them containing baby formula, weighed in Hong Kong prior to their journey back to mainland China on January 29, 2013.

Got milk formula? If you can’t find any in your local supermarket, Hong Kong’s government is telling parents, ‘just give us a call.’

Over the weekend, the government began manning a temporary 24-hour hotline helping parents order milk formula, which has nearly disappeared off shelves in some areas thanks to the crush of mainland Chinese shoppers preparing for Chinese Lunar New Year. In its first two days of operation, it received more than 3,800 calls, Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-Man said Sunday.

In addition to creating a 24-hour hotline, the government said it would propose amending the city’s legislation to cap the amount of milk formula individuals can take out of the city per trip at two tins, a plan that may be considered as early as next month. Such a measure, officials said, would make it more expensive for parallel traders to operate, as they’d have to make more frequent trips.

As the Lunar New Year approaches and the number of mainland Chinese in the city state swells, emotions are running particularly high.

A petition created last week on whitehouse.gov, for example—headlined “Baby Hunger Outbreak in Hong Kong, International Aid Requested”—has already garnered more than 13,400 signatures in just a few days. The text of the petition slams the “smugglers from mainland China [who] storm to this tiny city to buy milk powder and resell for huge profits in China.”

Milk powder is a popular gift in the mainland, where distrust of the country’s dairy supply is deeply entrenched, thanks to previous poisoned milk scandals.

Starting today, travelers can also expect greater scrutiny when riding the city’s subway system. New weight restrictions are now in place on a trial basis that ban suitcases heavier than 50 pounds, in a further effort to deter parallel traders. (The previous weight limit was 70 pounds.) Scales are already in place at a number of subway stops near the border and will be further expanded to other locations, officials said Friday.

Some of these measures may be temporary, said Mr. Ko. At the moment, though, he said, given the number of complaints from local mothers, “The government doesn’t have any other choice.” Officials will continue to monitor the market after Chinese New Year to decide if these policies are still needed, he said Friday.

And if parents are worried about whether their children will have milk formula during the holiday season, he assured them that all orders phoned in through the government hotline will be delivered before Chinese New Year. To ensure that the system is used by Hong Kong locals and not mainland Chinese, officials said parents using it may be required to show the child’s birth certificate.

Since September, some 2,000 people trying to cross into Hong Kong from mainland China have been turned away on suspicion of being parallel traders. Nearly 100 parallel traders, mostly mainland Chinese, have also been sentenced to prison stints of up to two months since last fall.

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